Untitled - Monoskop

REPRINTS AFTER EXPIRY OF A PRIVILEGE
published by Claude Chevallon of Paris, under a privilege dated 30 May 1525
(PA 1525, 6). The grant was for two years, and thus expired on 29 May 1527.
A local edition, produced by Jacques Martinet, appeared at Orleans in 1528
(BN B. 27333).
The first edition of the Memoires of Philippe de Commynes (the Louis XI
part) was published by Galliot Du Pre with a Parlement privilege dated 3
February 1524: it was for two years, and so expired on 2 February 1526
(PA 1524, 3). Galliot got the book out 26 April, and reprinted it 'nouvellement
reveue et corrigeV with an index on 7 September, so it was evidently (as
one would expect) something of a best-seller. The first reprint by another
publisher as far as I know, was that of Claude Nourry at Lyon in 1526
(Bodl. Douce c.subt. 15).
Jean Bouchet, author of the celebrated Annales d'Acquitaine (PA 1524, 15, cf.
above p. 183), saw to it after his disagreeable experience with Antoine
Verard that first editions of his works came out with a privilege granted to his
accredited publisher or to himself, throughout this period, and during the
years beyond
it in which he continued to write new works and to revise
existing ones. The author of the most recent book on Bouchet says:
There is some evidence that the privileges were respected; it is noticeable that the
Triomphes [Les Triumphes de la noble et amoureuse dame, privilege dated 20 February 1531],
which appears to have been extremely popular among Paris printers, was not
printed by any of them until the original four-year privilege had expired. The edition of
the Annales that they copied and expanded was that of 1535, which had appeared
without a privilege. '
Sometimes a. new publication sold sufficiently well to warrant a reprint by
the privilege-holder while the privilege was still valid. Thus the Annales
d'Acquitaine came out under privilege in 1524, and again on 3 March 1526
(BL 596. h. 1 1). A collection of Latin translations of works by St Basil
published by Josse Badius had a three-year privilege (PR 1520, u), publication
date 13 November 1520; Badius reprinted the whole work on 15 May
1523, displaying the original privilege,
which was of course still valid for
several months more.
When a bt>ok was reprinted after the expiry of the privilege under which it
originally appeared, the privilege was normally deleted, and the
announcement of a privilege on the title-page suppressed, whether the reprint
was published by the privilege-holder or not. The only exception known to me
is the edition of Jean Lemaire de Beiges, Les illustrations de Gaule, published by
Francois Regnault in 1523, which reproduces the privilege granted by
Louis XII to the author when the book first appeared, in 1509. Both
Louis XII and the author were dead when Regnault's edition came out.
Perhaps Regnault thought it enough of a curiosity to be worth perpetuating.
Perhaps his compositor included it without thinking, when he set up
1
Jennifer Britnell,yean Bouchet (Edinburgh, 1986), p. 300.
201
the new